Randall Balmer

Randall Balmer, Mandel Family Professor in the Arts & Sciences at Dartmouth College, is the author of a dozen books, including The Making of Evangelicalism: From Revivalism to Politics and Beyond and Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America. He wrote, produced and hosted a PBS documentary on Billy Graham, Crusade: The Life of Billy Graham.

“I prefer to think of Iowa as I saw it through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy,” Herbert Hoover, the only Iowan ever elected president of the United States, wrote at the beginning of his memoir. “Those were eyes filled with the wonders of Iowa’s streams and woods, of the mystery of growing crops.”

Papal consultant Edward N. Peters, who is also a professor at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, has stated in no uncertain terms that Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, should be shown no mercy. His offense? Seems that the governor has been shacking up—not with underage boys, mind you, but with his longtime partner, Sandra Lee. And as if that weren’t bad enough, Cuomo also supports same-sex marriage and believes that abortion is a private matter that shouldn’t be regulated by the state.

In a recent interview with Christianity Today, the magazine he helped to found in 1956, Billy Graham expressed regret that he hadn’t spent more time with his family. But he also reflected that he had become too involved in politics.

“I also would have steered clear of politics,” the 91-year-old evangelist said. “I’m grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to people in high places; people in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to. But looking back I know I sometimes crossed the line, and I wouldn’t do that now.”

The world of Sarah Palin can be divided neatly into good and bad. The latter category includes Hollywood, John Kerry, Michael Moore, “left-wing professors and journalists,” Nancy Pelosi, the Ninth Circuit Court, liberals, MSNBC, the American Civil Liberties Union, the New York Times, Barack Obama, health care, and “all the lawyers and academics and schooled-up ‘experts’ in D.C.”